Gabby’s brain is like a human fish finder. It comes in handy when she wants to avoid people. Mostly men. They seem to like her a bit too much. It’s lonely being different, but she’s adapted to it. Really. She just wishes she knew why she is different, though.

In her search for answers, she discovers a hidden community of werewolves. She immerses herself in their culture, learning about their world until she meets Clay. He’s unkempt, prone to mood swings, intense without saying a word, and he thinks Gabby is his.

It’s going to take every trick she knows to convince Clay to go away, and every bit of willpower not to fall for him when she discovers the man beneath the rough exterior.

Chelsea didn’t try to teleport. But after accidentally teleporting onto classified Navy vessel SeaSatellite5, all she’s rocking is the boat.

Trevor didn’t believe Chelsea had teleported on board. The same girl who’d given him a brief lifeline to sanity three months ago literally fell from the sky, under a mile of ocean, directly to him. But Trevor’s happiness at seeing her is cut short by a centuries-long family grudge. Chelsea is Atlantean, which would be totally fine if Trevor’s family weren’t Lemurian, the enemies of Atlantis. But Trevor wants no part of his family’s war. The only thing he wants is Chelsea, Atlantean or not.

But when SeaSatellite5 uncovers Atlantean ruins, placing the entire crew in the crosshairs of an ancient war, Trevor will have to come clean about his heritage to Chelsea and the US Navy. There are those who want the Atlantean artifacts inside the ruins, and only Trevor knows the relics for what they really are: Link Pieces, tools used by the ancient civilizations for their time-travel war.

With lies and shifting alliances abound, Chelsea and Trevor must think fast to save SeaSatellite5. If they don’t, the Lemurians will do whatever necessary to seize the artifacts and Atlantis will be destroyed forever. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Perfect Remains by Helen Fields #crimefiction #Thriller I chose this book because I discovered the author is local to me, book #2 in the series due out Jan 2018

On a remote Highland mountain, the body of Elaine Buxton is burning. All that will be left to identify the respected lawyer are her teeth and a fragment of clothing.

In the concealed back room of a house in Edinburgh, the real Elaine Buxton screams into the darkness.

Detective Inspector Luc Callanach has barely set foot in his new office when Elaine’s missing persons case is escalated to a murder investigation. Having left behind a promising career at Interpol, he’s eager to prove himself to his new team. But Edinburgh, he discovers, is a long way from Lyon, and Elaine’s killer has covered his tracks with meticulous care.

It’s not long before another successful woman is abducted from her doorstep, and Callanach finds himself in a race against the clock. Or so he believes … The real fate of the women will prove more twisted than he could have ever imagined. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

It is December, 1648, and England faces one of the greatest crises in its history. Bands of renegade soldiers and broken men roam the countryside, looting, burning and raping. In Parliament, former allies are torn apart after six years of bloody conflict. Will there be peace instead of war, or a military take-over of the country? John Swynfen, a rising young MP and one of the leaders of the moderate party, is working for peace, but only if safeguards can be established to protect Parliament and control the powers of the king. Ranged against him and his friends are Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton, intent on seizing power by the sword and destroying not only the monarchy but the elected government. Within a few weeks, London is occupied by Cromwell’s army, parliamentary government is in ruins, the king is executed. And John Swynfen is a prisoner.

Anne Swynfen travels home from Westminster to Staffordshire with her young children through a desperate winter. There, uncertain whether she will ever see her husband again, she takes charge of the large estate, where starvation looms due to bad harvests, and violent danger threatens from outlaws and the armies of both sides. While she struggles against prejudice to do a man’s job, John is shot, beaten, shackled, humiliated and tortured. Tempted by golden promises if he recants, threatened with death if he does not, he tries to cling to his sanity and his beliefs. When he finally escapes, he begins a terrible journey home across war-torn England to find his wife.

This is a story about keeping faith – many kinds of faith – in the face of terror, anguish and despair. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

The Alchemical Detective by Kirsten Weiss #UrbanFantasy #Paranormal #Crime I found this author via a book blogger’s review, and decided to try this book, I think it was free at the time, I liked it and bought more in the series.

Where Alchemy, Demons, and Good Wine Collide… with a Lake Monster Named Tessie. A psychic has been murdered in an occult ceremony and the police pay a visit to Riga Hayworth, metaphysical detective. But this time, she’s not a consultant on the case. She’s a suspect.

There’s a storm on the horizon.

Riga’s lost her magic and has come to Lake Tahoe to recover and spend quality time with her new love. But life for Riga is never that simple. A psychic’s been murdered, and the police believe Riga has a connection to the crime.

They’re right.

And if that’s not enough, Riga is drafted as the host of a reality TV show about the local lake monster, and her niece is rejecting her metaphysical abilities. Juggling demons, daimons, and angry tarot card readers, Riga must catch a killer before she becomes the next target.

The Alchemical Detective is an urban fantasy exploring the world of alchemy and the imagination. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day, and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Flora’s brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend’s boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora’s fractured mind, and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again. So when an encouraging email from Drake suggests she meet him on the other side of the world, Flora knows with certainty that this is the first step toward reclaiming her life.

With little more than the words “be brave” inked into her skin, and written reminders of who she is and why her memory is so limited, Flora sets off on an impossible journey to Svalbard, Norway, the land of the midnight sun, determined to find Drake. But from the moment she arrives in the arctic, nothing is quite as it seems, and Flora must “be brave” if she is ever to learn the truth about herself, and to make it safely home. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Glassmaker’s daughter Thea Markham is devastated when her brother Daniel goes missing. Then a mysterious lord turns up asking questions about Daniel and offers to find him. Unsure she can trust the handsome peer, Thea dresses up as a boy and follows him!

Lord Vernon Beauchamp feels his life lacks direction. Meeting Thea gives him a renewed purpose. And when they are thrown together on their scandalous adventure, friendship soon gives way to desire… AmazonUK | AmazonUS

“Some relationships have hidden truths that few can survive. Only us strong ones can dare listen to, and have the balls to stay and bear witness to, the result of irrevocable damages. So tell me, Maverick, are you one of the strong?”

Maverick, unfortunately, is well aware of Tucker’s meaning. Mav has recently lost his father, his mother is slipping into a depression, and his little sister is in desperate need of a parental figure. But now he’s losing his heart to Tucker’s mysterious sister, Delilah. As Maverick squints into the sun, looking at the beauty standing in front of the lake, he wonders if his heart is crazy for begging him to take on yet another tragedy. AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland at the tender age of six days old. Her French-born mother, the Queen Regent, knew immediately that the infant queen would be a vulnerable pawn in the power struggle between Scotland’s clans and nobles. So Mary was sent away from the land of her birth and raised in the sophisticated and glittering court of France. Unusually tall and slim, a writer of music and poetry, Mary was celebrated throughout Europe for her beauty and intellect. Married in her teens to the Dauphin François, she would become not only Queen of Scotland but Queen of France as well. But Mary’s happiness was short-lived. Her husband, always sickly, died after only two years on the throne, and there was no place for Mary in the court of the new king. At the age of twenty, she returned to Scotland, a place she barely knew.

Once home, the Queen of Scots discovered she was a stranger in her own country. She spoke only French and was a devout Catholic in a land of stern Presbyterians. Her nation was controlled by a quarrelsome group of lords, including her illegitimate half brother, the Earl of Moray, and by John Knox, a fire-and-brimstone Calvinist preacher, who denounced the young queen as a Papist and a whore. Mary eventually remarried, hoping to find a loving ally in the Scottish Lord Darnley. But Darnley proved violent and untrustworthy. When he died mysteriously, suspicion fell on Mary. In haste, she married Lord Bothwell, the prime suspect in her husband’s murder, a move that outraged all of Scotland. When her nobles rose against her, the disgraced Queen of Scots fled to England, hoping to be taken in by her cousin Elizabeth I. But Mary’s flight from Scotland led not to safety, but to Fotheringhay Castle… AmazonUK | AmazonUS

When you’ve read a book, do you sometimes find yourself thinking “oh, that really reminds me of *insert name of another book*”?

Welcome to a new feature, in which my team and I make reading suggestions based on your favourites, be they classics, or newer best sellers. Our recommendations consider not just genre, but writing style, plot—and that ‘feel’ you can’t quite put your finger on.

Flora Banks is a YA book by internationally acclaimed author Emily Barr, about a girl with no short-term memory, while Biddy Weir is by the perhaps less well-know Lesley Weir, on the theme of bullying, but my reading mind connected them because Flora Banks and Biddy Weir are both isolated from society due through no fault of their own.

Although Flora has no memory, she one day remembers a single incident and she grasps at this one shred of hope. Biddy Weir suffers from a seven year bullying campaign which almost destroys her. Circumstances of her upbringing kept the usual teenage opportunities closed to Biddy. She fell through a network of support systems and, sadly, people chose to gloss over her problems rather than offering help.

Biddy’s journey reminded me so much of Flora’s, although one is from rock bottom and despair, the other of hope. I found Biddy’s story heart-wrenching; the level of bullying was shocking. The book is split between Biddy’s teenage life and her still troubled adulthood, which provides plenty of opportunity for the book to appeal to a wide reading audience.

The prologue opens with an abstract scene from a beautiful, cold place. The narrator is running away from a dangerous hut; she can’t remember why.

Chapter one begins in Penzance, Cornwall. Seventeen year old Flora Banks is at a party, observing rather than participating; she’s feeling self-conscious about wearing what she considers the wrong type of clothes. The party is for Drake, her best friend Paige’s boyfriend, who is leaving to study in Svalbord, a Norwegian town in the Arctic circle.

Flora has Anterograde Amnesia left from a brain tumour when she was ten. To aid her ill-functioning memory, Flora writes herself notes: on her hands, on post-it notes and in her notebook. At home, there are notes written all over the house to remind her of family life.
Flora’s only friend is Paige, but they fall out when Paige discovers that Flora kissed Drake at the party. For Flora is was a spark of hope; she remembered the kiss the next day and the day after; it remains with her, precious in her memory.

Circumstances conspire to leave Flora home alone, and she worries how she will cope without the support of her family, but is warmed by her secret feelings for Drake; though miles away, he keeps in touch with her, and she soon realises that her feelings are reciprocated. The hope of happiness and need to see him takes her on a difficult, potentially perilous, journey, through Norway and up to Svalbord

This is such a moving read. Emily Barr has created a great sense of Flora’s world as she writes notes, reads and re-reads them; we’re pulled right in and live life through Flora’s eyes. The courage she shows as she picks herself up from moments of panic and tears to once again “Be Brave” brought tears to my eyes, and I was one hundred percent behind Flora as she made a last decision to take control of her own life. I highly recommend this book to both young and old readers.

Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day, and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Flora’s brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend’s boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora’s fractured mind, and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again. So when an encouraging email from Drake suggests she meet him on the other side of the world, Flora knows with certainty that this is the first step toward reclaiming her life.

With little more than the words “be brave” inked into her skin, and written reminders of who she is and why her memory is so limited, Flora sets off on an impossible journey to Svalbard, Norway, the land of the midnight sun, determined to find Drake. But from the moment she arrives in the arctic, nothing is quite as it seems, and Flora must “be brave” if she is ever to learn the truth about herself, and to make it safely home.

About the author

Emily Barr worked as a journalist in London, but always hankered after a quiet room and a book to write. She went travelling for a year, writing a column in the Guardian about it as she went, and it was there that she had an idea for a novel set in the world of backpackers in Asia. This became Backpack, which won the WH Smith New Talent Award. She has since written eleven more adult novels published in the UK and around the world, and a novella, Blackout, for the Quick Reads series. Her twelfth novel, The Sleeper, is a psychological thriller set on the London to Cornwall sleeper train.
In 2013 she went to Svalbard with the idea of setting a thriller in the Arctic. The book that came out of it was The One Memory of Flora Banks, a thriller for young adults, which attracted universal interest from publishers before being bought pre-emptively by Penguin earlier this year. It will be published globally in January 2017.
She lives in Cornwall with her partner and their children.

The 2017 Kindness challenge has been created by Niki Meadows Week #2 is all about Self Compassion What is Self Compassion? Self–compassion is extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Kristin Neff has defined self–compassion as being composed of three … Continue reading →